www.prcno.org
12 OCTOBER 2008 PRESERVATION IN PRINT
St. Peter between Decatur and Chartres
In 1851, Jenny Lind (1820-1887)–
“the Swedish Nightingale”–came to
New Orleans under the sponsorship of
impresario P.T. Barnum. While here,
she sang thirteen concerts to packed
houses. She did not perform in the
French Quarter, but rather at the St.
Charles Theater on St. Charles near
Poydras. The St. Charles Theater
is long gone, but the building that
housed Lind during her visit to New
Orleans is still a prominent part of the
city’s landscape. She stayed as a guest
in one of the townhouses of the Pon-
talba Building along St. Peter Street
facing Jackson Square (six years be-
fore the Andrew Jackson Monument
was erected). The block-long rows of
brick townhouses – not yet divided
into apartments as they are today –
with their ornate ironwork galleries
had been built by the Baroness Mi-
caela de Pontalba and had only been
completed about a year before Lind’s
visit. The baroness herself made a
townhouse available to Lind. When
the singer and Barnum arrived by
steamboat at the New Orleans levee,
the crowds were thick. Her many fans
were anxious to get as close to her
as possible, and Barnum feared that
she might be needlessly jostled. As
a ruse, Barnum walked off the steam-
boat with two ladies wearing veils,
and people quickly followed them
assuming that one must be the adored
singer. Jenny simply snuck off the
boat unescorted and made her way to
Gottschalk (1829-1869) became a
great matinee idol and one of the first
American composers to capture inter-
national attention. Ernest Guiraud
(1837-1892), whose father and
mother were musicians at the nearby
Orleans Theatre, spent most of his
musical career in Paris. He achieved
acclaim as a composer in his own
right. A confidant of such composers
as Bizet, Offenbach, and Saint-Saens,
he was also the composition teacher
of Paul Dukas and Claude Debussy.
627-631 Royal Street
Nearly ten years after Jenny Lind
captivated New Orleans, another
great singer came to the city and
received great acclaim. This time,
the star was Spanish-born soprano
Adela Juana Maria (Adelina) Patti
(1843-1919). She had first per-
formed in New Orleans at the age
of ten, but it was during the more
memorable season of 1860-1861 that
she sang at the new French Opera
House and became an instantaneous
hit. The Opera House had only
recently opened and was already
facing bankruptcy when Patti agreed
to appear in December of 1860. An
overwhelming success, she quickly
became the darling of the Crescent
City and performed one opera after
another throughout the season,
saving the Opera House from an
early closure. Tradition says that
her pension was in the rather simple
building that had been constructed
by merchant Antoine Cavelier. It
is among the oldest buildings on
Royal Street, as it was built soon
after the 1788 fire and survived the
fire of 1794. As such a sensation,
Patti was greeted by Orleanians with
great fanfare wherever she went, and
her Royal Street residence became
a center of attention. The large
courtyard came to be called “Patti’s
726 St. Peter Street
Just around the corner from Patti’s
Courtyard, is one of the most famous
music venues in modern New Orleans
where traditional jazz can be heard.
Preservation Hall grew out of jam ses-
sions held in the art gallery of Lorenzo
Borenstein in the early 1960s and the
love of jazz fostered by Philadelphians
Allan and Sandra Jaffe. Eventually,
these informal gatherings led to the
formation of the New Orleans Society
for the Preservation of Traditional
Jazz, and on June 19, 1961, Preserva-
tion Hall opened its doors. To the
delight of all jazz lovers, the venue is
still going strong. It is located in a
building that dates to 1817 and was
a speculative venture by noted local
builders Claude Gurlie and Joseph
Guillot. The building has seen few
outward alterations in its almost 200
years of existence, although its origi-
nal wooden balcony was replaced by
ironwork in the 20th century. Just as
Preservation Hall entertains its listen-
ers with the sounds of traditional jazz,
the building itself provides an invalu-
able example of early 19th-century
New Orleans architecture that is still
essentially intact.
520 Royal Street
Although originally built in 1816 by
a French wine merchant and furniture
maker named François Seignouret,
this famous courtyard and its surround-
ing buildings now bear the name of
a later owner, Pierre Brulatour, who,
coincidentally, was an 1880s wine
dealer. Like most 19th-century French
Quarter courtyards, this was once a
functional area devoted to furniture
building, storage, and household needs,
as well as the entrance to the stables
at the rear of the property. Fallen into
disrepair, the property was acquired
by wealthy banker and businessman
William Ratcliffe Irby (1860-1926)
in 1918. As a leading preservation-
ist of the day, Irby was responsible for
financing a number of French Quarter
restoration projects including the St.
Louis Cathedral and the Paul Morphy
House – now Brennan’s Restaurant.
He intended to use the Brulatour
house as his French Quarter home,
and its restoration gave rise to one of
the loveliest courtyards in the Quarter
— and consequently, one of the most
photographed. Music ruled on the
third floor, where a great room in the
Spanish revival style of the 1920s was
built. Its centerpiece is an organ built
by the Aeolian Organ Company. An
Preservation Hall
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Place d’Armes with St. Louis Cathedral and Pontalba Apartments
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627-631 Royal St.
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the Upper Pontalba Building unhin-
dered. One of the leading importers
of fine furniture provided the furnish-
ings for the townhouse during her stay
and later sold the same furniture at an
enormously popular auction.
Courtyard” and was a popular gath-
ering place for admirers hoping to
catch a glimpse of their idol. The
French Opera House — like Jenny
Lind’s St. Charles Theater — is now
only a memory, having burned in
1919, but Adelina’s presumed resi-
dence remains a part of the Royal
Street scene.